The World Bank announced on Tuesday ( Dec. 10 ) that the Philippine economy is expected to grow more slowly than initially anticipated this year after the country was hit by a number of typhoons. However, it should be stronger in 2025 and 2026, according to the World Bank.
Gross domestic product ( GDP ) will expand by 5.9 per cent in 2024, slightly less than an earlier 6.0 per cent outlook, after bad weather in the third quarter, the bank said in its Philippines Economic Update.
” The land remains resilient to extreme weather events such as storms and heavy rainfall rains”, Zafer Mustafaoglu, World Bank state director for the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam, said in a statement.
GDP will expand to 6.1 per share in 2025 and 6.0 per share in 2026, it added.
The estimates were all at the lower end of the president’s recently-reduced target of 6.0 per cent to 6.5 per cent for 2024, and 6.0 per cent to 8.0 per share in each of the following two decades.
Due to erratic weather that hampered government spending and sluggish farm output, GDP decreased from 5.2 % to 5.2 %, which is its lowest level in more than a year. Progress in the first nine months of 2024 was 5.8 per cent.
Progress in the Philippines depends on containing prices, which will help the central banks maintain a more dovish monetary policy to encourage business activity, according to the lender.
A “demographic payout” might also be beneficial for the nation, it added.
More than 110 million people live in the Philippines, with a median age of 25.3 decades old as of 2020, according to federal data.
It is one of the few countries in the area that, according to the bank, has the potential to prosper before its population considerably ages.